The Beginner's CrashCourse to Dimensional Travel
by GrinningMic
Summary: An experiment in progress...
1. Prelude

Please note this disclaimer: my respects go out to JK Rowling and her works and I in no way make any claim to her characters (of course). Though I will my own ;)

Now, a tiny little bit about my story (I intend to keep this short): this was a one-off, self-insertion piece I started working on back in early 2006. And it is also a personal writing experiment: I have always had difficulty writing in first-person, having always found first-person annoyingly limiting when it comes to background story, description of events and character development. I also have great difficulty in finishing the stories I start.

This story is my attempt to write a first-person story that is interesting, engaging and finished. Please let me know if I'm doing okay with it, or please feel free to give me some constructive criticisms as to how I might make it better (an inclusion of sex-scenes don't count ;p ).

_**A Beginner's Crash-Course Guide to Dimensional Travel**_

_By CalamityM_

**Prelude: The Space, Time & Dimensional Paradox.**

We are not alone. Though we are scientifically certain, in a universe stretching several billions of light-years across, that we are isolated as a sentient race; that we exist as the randomly created, sole inhabitant of so much empty space, so vast and unfathomable that it seems impossible that there could be anyone else here. Possibly we would be very much surprised to know that there is intelligent, sentient life as close to us as our own skin. And that it exists concurrently with us in a Parallel Universe. Several, in fact.

Our planet, our Sun and the stars in our skies are merely one possibly of a universe. Our Earth exists – in our reality and in our universe – upon a Plane of Existence shared by several other universes, other realities and other Earths. It is theorised that it exists as one possible universe in a Multiverse of variable outcomes. Such a theory is called the String Theory. In String Theory, each universe exists in its own 'membrane' of reality, drifting and spiraling around like smoke inside a soap bubble; each has its own set of rules, its own outcomes and its own history of origins. In some realities the stars and constellations are different from ours; in others, humanity evolved upon the Earth through another source than apes; in other realities, the Earth is flat or square or otherwise different in some measurable way; and in some other realities, Earth doesn't exist at all.

They are each similar yet different, in their own unique way, to one another. But there are three distinct 'types' of membranes: Hard Universes, Soft Universes and Incorporeal Universes (alternatively known as 'Spectral' Universes). 

Hard Universes conform to preset inviolate laws. It is bounded by restrictions as to how a universe can behave; Laws of Physics must be able to be calculated and predicted; the permanent-structural shape of the universe must be consistent. It behaves according to preordained rules: What goes up must come down.

Soft Universes are those membranes in which the Rules of Reality has been 'softened'. While they are still governed by the same laws and rules of the Hard Universes, those rules are 'malleable' and can be very subtly altered, changed or challenged, to varying degrees, depending on the level of manipulative (or psychic) ability by the beings living within.

Lastly, and most importantly, there are the Spectral Universes. Reality is bent in these realms, much in the same way that light is bent when passing through a crystal; light itself is not changed on any molecular level, it is still light, but it is divided, manipulated or reshaped by the crystal's design. So too is Reality within a Spectral Universe. They are "Magical" worlds; places in which the impossible is possible; the surreal is commonplace; unnatural alteration in both living and inanimate matter is normal; and the common Laws of Physics are placed, upside-down, upon their heads. They are strange universes, which seem to obey only their own (and seemingly, forever changing) Rules of Reality.

And all these 'other' possible realities, in their own membranes of existence, all drift like jellyfish – some as tiny as the head of a pin, others as great in size as the universe itself – in a vast ocean that is the Bioplasmic Universe. The Bioplasmic Universe is the Plane upon which all the membranes, the alternative universes, exist. It flows, unheeded by physical constraints, through each membrane, regardless of its characteristics; it is energy in its purist form, seething and raw, wild and primal. It is alive as an ocean is alive; made up out of the life it both contains and sustains. It is the Sea of Souls, the Mother Ocean; it is life and light and 'Love' – and death. It is Everything-that-is.

So what happens when one floating membrane collides with another? That depends on the membrane in question; Hard Universes bounce off one another when they do occasionally collide (causing catastrophic and sudden influxes of kinetic energy so violent and devastatingly strong that they reshape the whole universe with each collision – and it should be noted that the 'Big Bang' is theorised to have been the outcome of one such collision), as they are too 'solidified' by Reality to allow any outside alteration, even when colliding with a Soft Universe. 

Soft Universes merge into one another to form a new, larger universe; in such universes there can be two "Earths", each one slightly different from the other. Spectral Universes, on the other hand, are very different; they drift, like their ghostly namesakes, through other universes without any disruption or alteration to either. But their passing does not go completely unnoticed. Behind them, they leave Echoes… 


	2. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: The world of Harry Potter, and all characters therein, do not belong to me! They belong to JK Rowling; I've merely borrowed a few of them for a little while. Blacksun, however, does belong to me. Noone else would tolerate her.

Warning: mild violence, adult-themes, mild coarse language.

_**A Beginner's Crash-Course to Dimensional Travel**_

_By CalamityM_

**Chapter 1: Mary-Suing It.**

"If I am the storm, if I am the wonder  
Will I have a flash-lights, nightmares  
And sudden explosions?"

- Royksopp, What Else Is There?

It hadn't been a conscious decision; in fact it hadn't been my decision at all. The day had started typically the same; walking from the same flat that had been my home for the past two years, over the same roads and bustling streets that I had travelled across everyday since I had started working at the supermarket; down the same lane, short-cutting between the same rows of shabby apartment blocks on my way to work: it was all the same monotonous stuff that happened to me everyday. Right up until the point at which the 'thing' hit me.

I was only aware of a sensation of pressure, like the static build-up before a thunderstorm, before everything went dark. Seconds before I had passed out, I remember thinking: '_Oh crap, I'm probably going to be robbed by the first bastard who finds me!_' and hoping that I had had the presence of mind not to put all my money in my wallet and instead hide a couple of notes in the pockets of my jacket and jeans. It was only when I started regaining consciousness that it became clear to me that not everything was right in the world.

As I slowly roused, I became aware of several things, each one almost instantaneous with the other; I became aware that it was cold, which was unusual since it was mid-February and Summer time in the Southern hemisphere. It was just before midday and should have been hitting 45C around now, but there was a distinct chill to the air that was making me shiver and my skin goose-bump. The other thing that slowly dawned on me was the fact that the ground beneath me was flat, rather than the lumpy spheroid-shape of the cobblestones in the lane in which I had passed-out in. This was odd, but not unsettling. What was unsettling was the fact that there were people screaming in the near distance to where I was laying.

Groaning from the sharp aching in my back, I raised my head to see if I could work out what the hell was going on. It was dark and it was justifiably assumable that it was night-time, which made me wonder how long I had been unconscious for; it was also the wrong street, the wrong row of apartments (instead there were tall apartment blocks stretching up above me on either side) and possibly even the wrong suburb. I couldn't tell where I was, since nothing around me seemed familiar; it was a city but not the one I was currently living in, I was sure of that! There were flashes of light up ahead in the alleyway, possibly where it connected to the street, and shrill screams and panicked voices rose again in the wake of the lightshow. I frowned and crawled cautiously over to the wall adjacent to me on hands and knees, trying to make myself as inconspicuous as possible.

Was it a terrorist attack? Was the sensation I had felt in the lane the shockwave from the blast of an explosion? And why the hell would anyone want to blow-up Q-market?

I reconsidered the last question, and disregarded it since it was obvious that the suspect list would be far too long and wouldn't _need_ to include terrorists. The question wasn't so much _why would_ anyone blow the place up, as much as why wouldn't?

There was another flash of light within the screaming and my intuition pulled urgently at my consciousness from the depths of my mind like a gentle, but adamant little voice insisting that I flee. If I hadn't been sore, cold and confused I probably would have heeded it. But in my bafflement I made the incredibly stupid mistake of moving closer towards the source of the light and screams, all the while crouching low in the shadows.

As I neared the mouth of the alleyway there was a loud boom and a rumble along the ground under my feet. Smoke bellowed out from around the corner of the building when I stood, flooding into the alleyway and surrounding me. I coughed violently, my lungs tightening as my asthma kicked in, and scrambled backwards to get away from the smoke. Blinded now, and keeping my head low, I clung to the side of the alley wall as I moved further away from the city street into the shadows. My eyes stung and ran with tears and my sinuses burned from the acrid, chemical smell all around me. I slumped down onto the cold, concrete floor and tried to suck clean air into my lungs. I coughed and wheezed, my airway feeling tight in my chest and my vision blurring.

Then I heard movement in front of me. The steady sounds of footsteps under the cacophony of panicked yells and terrified wailing; and now the distant booms of explosions. The air around me cleared suddenly, as though the smoke had been blasted away by a sudden strong wind. And walking calmly down the alleyway, with what I first assumed was a torch in one hand, was a hooded figure.

Light shone directly into my face, blinding me and leaving bright spots in front of my eyes when it was finally moved away. Over the sound of my own wheezing I heard the figure chuckle to itself.

"What have we here?" asked an irritatingly teasing, masculine voice. "What are you doing in here, little Muggle? Why aren't you out there, having fun with the rest of the muggles?"

I heard him moving closer and tried to stand up on my trembling legs, but found I couldn't. I cursed my asthma is the privacy of my own head. The man was clearly insane: Muggles? What the hell?! Maybe he was some demented lunatic who was in a weird, twisted Harry Potter cult? That explained the explosions and the panic of those I had heard in the street; the son-of-a-bitch probably thought he was a freakin' Death Eater, or some such nonsense! What I had thought was a terrorist attack was surely some sick joke by a bunch of hyped-up, Harry Potter obsessed, crack-heads; he and his group must have set something up, planted bombs and fireworks about the place to make themselves feel as though they were really in the Hogwarts' Universe, while they marched around pretending to be dark-wizards!

The mere idea set my teeth on edge; Fad-Nazis always ruined it for everyone…

"F'k off." I wheezed. He was probably going to kill me, but he wasn't going to hear me beg first.

I heard him laughing and then suddenly I was in agony. Every nerve in my body was engulfed with pain. My skin felt like it was being paper-cut across every tiny inch of it, while at the same time being stabbed repetitively with needles. I could barely breathe; my lungs were seising-up like I had been winded, while the waves of excruciating agony hit me again and again. My back was against the cold concrete now; the muscles in my body contracting and squeezing involuntarily and the coarse surface underneath me raked across any exposed skin as I spasm and twitched. And all I could think amidst the pain was: _Tazer! He's hit me with a freaking tazer! The coward!_

_To be continued..._


	3. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: The world of Harry Potter, and all characters therein, do not belong to me! They belong to JK Rowling; I've merely borrowed a few of them for a little while. Blacksun, however, does belong to me. Noone else would tolerate her.

Warning: mild violence, adult-themes, mild coarse language.

_**A Beginner's Crash-Course to Dimensional Travel**_

_By CalamityM_

**Chapter 2: Blacksun Symphony.**

"I am the voice inside your head

_And I control you"_

- Nine Inch Nails, Mr Self-Distruct

It has been documented, that in times of extreme stress or pain, that the human mind 'distracts' itself. Individuals that have undergone days of physical torture have reported seeing visions of deceased loved-ones; witnessed the universe unfold before their eyes; or seen strange sights of bizarre beings or animal spirits who have spoken to them and told them of the secrets of the worlds, both physical and spiritual. As I lay on the hard ground, pain shooting up my spine and down every nerve, all I got were multicoloured spots in front of my eyes. I couldn't help but felt somewhat cheated.

Finally it let up. Though I think it may have been due to boredom on the part of my torturer.

I rolled onto my side, desperately gulping air and coughing uncontrollably. Before I could barely breathe, now I knew I couldn't. In a weird way I was almost pleased; the torture had knocked me around quite a bit but the asthma would kill me before this arsehole could. It was like a little triumph on my part.

I heard him approach, his footsteps loud in my ear while my head rested against the concrete. He stopped close-by, standing over me.

"Is there something wrong with you, muggle?" he asked, sounding almost curious.

_Not at all, retard, I'm just doing my regular fish-out-of-water impersonation_! I thought irritably.

I saw him crouching down, in my peripheral vision, to get a better look at me. The torch was shone on my face and I squeezed my eyes closed to protect them against the assaulting brightness. I wanted to lash out and punch him but my arms didn't want to work. I felt so exhausted.

"You seem to be having difficulty breathing, don't you? Why can't you breathe, little muggle?"

_It's the wretched stench you're emitting; the smell is suffocating me. When was the last time you showered_? I wanted to say, but my mouth was too busy trying to put air in my lungs. My vision started to go patchy, black spots popping in and out over my view. '_S lack of air to my brain_, I decided, _I'm going to faint. Need. Ventolin. Fuc-!_

Everything slowly began to fade to black. I could still hear his voice in the distance, calling,

"Muggle? Muggle? Little muggle? Answer me, little muggle, or I'll…"

I never heard the rest of the threat; I was too busy being unconscious. I finally had my vision, but it was so dull it certainly wasn't worth the wait – or the torture, for that matter: I found myself standing in a white room. A boring, nondescript, little box of a room in which there was nothing else, other than me, in it; it had four white walls, a white floor and a white ceiling. And a red door set in the wall opposite me. The room was brightly lit wherever I looked, but I couldn't help the feeling that the corners grew dark with shadows when I wasn't looking directly at them; and I even begun to think that I saw, once or twice, movement out of the corner of my eye. The red door was the only prominent thing here.

I started thinking: _I wonder what's behind that door_?

Then there was _definite_ movement in my peripheral vision; so I slowly turned around.

I knew her name, because I had seen her before; but never in person and never this clearly. Her long hair was stark white and left hanging freely over her shoulders and shadowing her face. She was wearing a plain, non-descript, off-white dress, which looked almost like a gown, like one of the ones you see on metal patients in the movies, except this one had buttons down the front. She stood a few inches from the back wall of the room, quiet and still and watching me all the while; with her shoulders slumped forwards, her back stooped, her arms hanging by her sides and her head tilted down, she looked like a puppet with most of its strings cut.

_Hello, Blacksun_. I thought, tensely. And strangely enough I didn't seem to need to speak out-loud, here in the white room.

I saw a slight smile spread slowly across her half-hidden face. Her eyes were still covered by her hair, but I still knew she was staring intensely at me. She always stared when she was excited; stared and grinned and then uttered her strange, insane little tuneless song. Her Blacksun Symphony.

_I am madness creeping… Eyes peeping…_ She told me.

_Yes_, I thought, _you are_.

Her smile widened.

_I am shade and shadow and watching world…_she said with more confidence. _I am darkness and death and Hell unfurled!_

_Why are you __**here**__, Blacksun_? I thought, shivering despite myself. She should have been dead. She had already died, after all. She certainly shouldn't have been here inside this room with _me_!

She looked up at the ceiling, her pale hair falling away from her face to reveal her one real eye and the one fake. Anyone who saw her would ultimately assume that the strange one was the fake; the normal-looking one, with no scarring around it, seemed like it _should_ be the real one. But the only reason there was no scarring around the fake eye was that she hadn't woken up when the man had removed it. It had driven her insane, losing that eye; suddenly the world had only seemed half real. Then again, she hadn't been all that sane to begin with--

She turned her gaze from the ceiling to stare at me again with her fake blue eye and natural amber eye, her slit-pupil dilating for a brief second. She placed a finger to her lips and mockingly gestured for me to be quiet.

_Wha_-?

And then it hit me, the same terrible pain as before. It tore through me; coursing down my body like someone had poured acid through a hole in the top of my skull. I screamed and fell to the ground, withering and wailing in pain on the bright, white floor. I realised then, what the hooded man's threat had been. Through the tears I saw Blacksun standing above me, staring at me with her creepy eyes. Another shock of agony tore through me and I threw my head back and screamed. I couldn't seem to stop and I heard it echoing back to me as my wails and cries bounced around off the white walls.

Then just as suddenly the pain stopped. Relief washed over me, my nerves slowly calmed though my body still ached. I wondered if he was waiting for me to wake up before he continued, or maybe… An unpleasant thought occurred to me and I tried to force it away. I was sure it wasn't true.

Maybe I was now dead?

I sat up painfully, my body still shivering from the residual shock from the agony it had endured. No, not dead, I decided, if I were dead I wouldn't feel anything and I felt awful. I looked around the quiet, white room and gradually it dawned on me that there was something missing.

Blacksun was gone.


	4. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: The world of Harry Potter, and all characters therein, do not belong to me! They belong to JK Rowling; I've merely borrowed a few of them for a little while. Blacksun, however, does belong to me. Noone else would tolerate her.

Meh, no warnings needed.

_**A Beginner's Crash-Course to Dimensional Travel**_

_By CalamityM_

**Chapter 3: Patience is a Virtue.**

"Either way you turn  
I'll be there  
Pull out your skull  
I'll be there  
Climbing up the walls"

- Radiohead, Climbing Up the Walls

There are two main forms of panic. One is the screaming frenzy of mindless, repetitive activity; such as running around in a circle, chewing your fingernails, gnawing on your bottom lip, pulling out your hair in handfuls, or just screaming and bouncing up and down on the spot; or simply running away until your legs give out. The other is a quiet, unsettle sort; in which case you sit and stare, wide-eyed and petrified, at the opposite wall until your hair turns white.

I'm not quite sure with one is healthier, but at the time I didn't have any real choice: my brain made its own selection.

I stared at the red door, not out of curiosity, but simply because it was there in front of me. I was thinking in the insane, scrambled sort of way that shuts down all the motor-functions than the necessary ones, while you brain rants at you. I guess there are worse things than being trapped inside your own head while unknown, and possibly violent and horrible, things are happening to your body. But I was buggered if I could think of a single one.

No wait, there was one; being _conscious_ when violent and horrible things are being done to your body; but then again, at least you weren't in for a nasty shock when you woke up!

So I sat and stared, all the while wondering where Blacksun had gone to. I had my suspicions, none of them good and all of them increasingly more worrying the longer I thought about them; hence the panic. She couldn't have… No, no that would be bad. It would explain a few things, but at the same time it could possibly be worse than the alternative horrible things that might be happening to me in the waking-world; then again…

And round and round it went, the running ménage of half-formed questions and half-arsed answers that fills your skull when you're anticipating something terrible. I sat and stared, and worried, and whimpered; mainly because there wasn't anything else I could do at that point. But one question in my mind always remained the same: what the Hell is going on?!

Where was I (my body, that was) and how the Hell did I get here? Who was that hooded man and why did he keep calling me 'muggle' all the damn time and why was he blowing shit up? Why do I get the feeling that I'm no longer in Australia? Why was there a white room in my head, with a red door in it? What the Hell was Blacksun doing here, when before she only existed as a character in my imagination? And most importantly; what the Hell was going on?!

_What is GOING ON_?! I thought, and the words bounced around the white room and echoed back to me:

…'sgoingon… goingon… ingon… gon… gon… gon…

Gone. A cold certainty slowly began to dawn on me, one I could no longer deny as the truth. She's gone up there! I suddenly realised just how deeply in the shit I was: I had been possessed; Blacksun had my body!

The very thought shook me from my stupor, forcing my brain out of quiet terror and into urgent madness. I couldn't let her have control over my body!

I leapt up in a sudden spur of action and searched the white walls frantically, pressing my fingers against the flat surface in an attempt to pry open an exit that just wasn't there. I beat my fists against the smooth, flat surface and swore loudly at the wall for refusing to be helpful. I stared longingly up at the ceiling, wishing desperately for an opening to suddenly immerge above me (preferably with the accompaniment of a ladder) so that I could escape. But nothing appeared. I felt the other sort of panic slowly begin to boil up inside me; the same sort of panic that also came from claustrophobia. I walked back and forth over the white floor, the same thought repeating inside my head like a mantra: _I have to get out! I have to get out! IhavetogetoutIhavetogetoutIhavetogetout!!!_

I _needed_ to get out! The longer I stayed trapped here, the longer she had control over my physical form, to do with it as she pleased. But there was no way out!

Except… There was one exit I hadn't tried…

I looked over at the red door, its bold colour standing out strongly against the white of the wall it was set into. Something made me hesitate to open it. Some strong sense of foreboding that overshadowed my desperate need to leave the confines of my own unconsciousness. And somehow I knew that the red door was a way out, but not the _right_ way out.

I walked closer to it, gazing apprehensively along its height and width, to the small, polished, red knob of a handle fixed at waist-height to its surface. It _was_ a way out, but where did it lead?

My hands clenched at my sides, my fingernails digging into my palms, as I struggled with my instincts. On one hand, I had to get out, it was a necessity; I couldn't remain here while she was up there. On the other hand I couldn't go through the red door; there was some nagging doubt in my mind that suggested that it wouldn't be a good idea. I struggled for an answer, raising my hand towards the doorknob and then pulling away again in nervous reluctance. All the while my anxiety-fuelled thoughts were still repeating: _I have to get out! I have to get out! I HAVE TO GET OUT!!!_

And then there was a soft click from behind me and I turned around; there, in the centre of the back wall, a white door had appeared.

A/N: To be continued... (I realise I probably should have done this for all prior chapters, but I forgot. So there. ;p )


	5. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: The world of Harry Potter, and all characters therein, do not belong to me, I've merely borrowed a few of them from JK Rowling for a little while. Any non-canon characters, however, have been created by me. Oh, and Blacksun is also one of mine. A scary, creepy, disturbed one of mine...

**Warning: this chapter contains graphic depictions of violence.**

_**A Beginner's Crash-Course to Dimensional Travel**_

_By CalamityM_

**Chapter 4: Fear and Loathing in London.**

"I had a dream, Joe  
You were standing

In the middle of an open road  
I had a dream, Joe  
Your hands were raised up to the sky  
And your mouth was covered in foam"

- Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, I had a Dream Joe

I regained consciousness only to find myself slumped up against a car; it was one of those new beetles with all the new-tech but only half the charm of the old ones. This one was a shade of blue I believed was referred to as 'electric' and had a broken window on the driver's side, which, coincidently, was the same side that I was slumped against. My knuckles hurt, which didn't seem at all reassuring. I was also covered in blood; and since I had only a few minor scratches it was acceptable to presume that most of it didn't belong to me, which was even less reassuring.

I got up painfully, my muscles and joints complaining loudly in pops and nasty twinges. Strangely enough, my asthma had subsided and I found that I could breathe a little better, though my chest ached internally and my throat was sore. I felt exhausted and was shivering from cold.

I looked around and saw that it was still dark; the only light source was the half-hidden stars in the sky, since the streetlights were dead, and the street itself was empty but for a few abandoned cars. I could still smell smoke in the air, mixed with the bitter chemical scent of burning plastics, as well as the strong smell of burning meat.

_Let it be a butcher's shop_, I thought hurriedly. _Anything other than what it's __**likely**__ to be!_

My stomach gave a heavy lurch at the thought of the possible carnage that lay strewn about the streets from where I had just come from; and from a mixture of anger, horror and sympathetic grief, I felt tears swell up in my eyes and run down my face. I hoped that I wasn't the only survivor of the terrorist attack, and then couldn't help but feel slightly guilty for also hoping that none of the dead was anyone I knew. Though somehow I doubted that they would be, since it was now clear to me that I was somehow a long way away from home.

I slumped back down against the car, my chest feeling tight with grief and anxiety. I was lost in a strange city with no contacts, friends or family to depend on, and the shock of having just been amidst a terrorist attack was hitting me heavily. I felt relieved that I was alive, but also awful that I hadn't tried to help anyone else to survive; or at least, not to my knowledge.

In the distance I could hear the wail of various sirens of emergency vehicles and I wondered, not for the first time that night, as to where the Hell I was. This wasn't Australia, this certainly wasn't my city of origin; it was far too cold! I had awoke to find myself alone and lost; I was frightened and chilled to the bone, the cold pressed in all around me, making me shiver uncontrollably and my teeth chatter. I was helpless, horrified and confused. And now I was crying, which just made me colder still, from being damp, and pathetic. The scent of smoke was fairly faint, except that which was carried over on the wind, and the sirens sounded at least a few blocks away. I was sure that I was a good few kilometres from the alley I had been tortured in…

Which raised another question: Where did the hooded man go?

I tried to recall the last few minutes of my life before I had woken up beside the car, and suddenly I wished that I hadn't. I stood up sharply, frowning at the realization that I wasn't alone after all.

I felt her in my mind, hiding away in a dark corner, waiting in the recesses until she could come out again. I had hoped that she would have been banished to whichever nightmare she had originated from, the moment I had regained consciousness and control over my own body. But I could feel her lurking in there, waiting patiently for an opportunity to come out again.

_Go away, Blacksun_! I thought at her, angrily. _You've had your fun!_

I could see her in my mind's-eye, as she lifted her head to stare at me with her mad eyes,

_I am shrill screams and broken bone… I am bloody pool and dead alone_… she said, and smiled.

Images burned across my retinas, fleeting but frightfully detailed: I saw my own hand lashing out to grip and twist the hooded man's wrist-- the image switched, and I could clearly see his face, the hood pulled from his head, his blue-eyes clear for a second in the torch light, and he was screaming in pain-- another switch, and he's trying to crawl away on his back, dragging his broken leg behind him and clutching a useless arm to his chest-- another change of scene, one bloody and horrific: and he's spreadeagled on the ground, his mouth agape, his eyes staring and dead, and it's my hands ripping at the flesh on his abdomen, tearing it apart to expose the meat and the fatty-tissue and organs underneath--

I retch suddenly and stumble forwards to grip the bonnet of the car. I'm shaking from shock and horror to what I've just witnessed: what I've just remembered the _feel_ of under my own hands. My stomach cramping suddenly, nausea bending me double as I emptied my stomach's contents onto the concrete. For some reason I can taste a tinny flavour in my mouth; it's oddly familiar, like the times I've accidentally bit the insides of my cheeks or side of my tongue… Wiping a shaking hand across my mouth, and spitting out the acidic taste of vomit, I make the mistake of looking down and seeing in the faint light: Blood. I just vomited-up blood; and quite a lot of it too…

Again I'm heaving, tears running down my face as my aching muscles contracted again to force out what's left inside my belly. I choke and gag as the ghastly meal I involuntarily had is expelled, noting, with horror, that not all of it feels like it's liquid. Again, and only out of a newfound morbid curiosity, I make the mistake of opening my eyes while I'm still bent over.

I stare down at the mess now covering the concrete, where it shines wetly in the gloom, half-visible from the light reflecting off the liquid surface, but even in the shadows it's still grisly… and it stares back up at me.

_That's an onion_! I told myself quickly. _For some inexplicable reason, you swallowed a small pickled onion at breakfast and had just forgotten about it! That's the onion you swallowed! You only remember it now, because it's suddenly become important!_

_That's right, an onion_! I agreed wholeheartedly. _And I swallowed it for breakfast, even though I distinctly remember having cereal. But no, I remember now! I had an onion instead! _ _A little pickled onion with a blue dot on it, and a pupil…_

There was nothing left to throw-up, but I tried anyway.

* * *

I staggered down the street for the good part of an hour, dazed and dizzy from hunger and stress, and over-tired from the comedown after the last remnants of my adrenalin had faded. I was exhausted, my feet dragging with each step as I made my way down an alien street in an alien city: an alien myself. There were shop windows on either side of the street, but it was too dark to see their contents clearly, so I gave up trying. Litter and rogue pages from discarded newspapers, rolled about the empty road and past the tall shop buildings, blown about by the cold winds that hit me like buckets of ice-water. I hugged myself in a vain attempt to keep warm, my teeth clicking like castanets and my muscles cramping up painfully.

I needed somewhere safe to sleep through the night, I decided; I realised that if I remained outside for much longer I would be sure to die from exposure. It was far too cold to be Australia in summer, which left several possible alternatives as to where I was. I considered the evidence so far: it was cold, therefore not in the Southern hemisphere; the only person I had encountered had an English accent, but that didn't necessary mean that I was in England since he could have been a tourist; the city was large but fairly quiet, though I was pretty certain that I was only in a outer commercial district and not the main city centre, so that wasn't much to go on; and all the writing I had seen, on newspapers and old wall posters, were in English.

So there were two choices: either I was in England, or America, but either way I was definitely screwed!

No contacts, no prior experience in either country; no money - other than the petty fifty bucks I had in Australian currency and that wouldn't amount to much here, whether _here_ was England or America! No map, no tour guide, no accommodation nor transportation. My best bet was to find an Australian Embassy in the morning and get deported home; which would also mean a lot of questions I couldn't answer, a possible large fine for being in another country without a passport or going through the correct processes, and being banned from ever returning to the country again… Yes, I was definitely screwed!

I freed my shoulder from the left strap of my backpack and pulled the pack across my side, to reach into one of its side pockets and retrieve my Ventolin. I took another couple of puffs for the third time in the past hour, my lungs still feeling tight and stuffy; I had always been prone to asthma attacks in the winter and the fact that I was badly dressed for the cold didn't help matters at all. My nose had started running some time ago and I was sure I was coming down with the flu.

I fetched another tissue from a travel-pack in my bag and solved the dripping problem for the time being. I squeezed my eyes shut and blew my nose, and suddenly discovered that there was something on the ground at ankle level that I hadn't spotted in the dark. With a crash and a painful whack to both my knees, I fell on top of something large, rectangular and metal. I got up off the ground, rubbing the new aches and pains in my knee joints, and examined the thing I had tripped over; it was a wire newsstand, lying abandoned on the ground and half-hidden in the shadows. I picked it up and squinted at the headline, making out some story about a lottery winner who was now the proud receiver of one and a half million pounds.

_Okay_, I thought. _Now I know I'm in England. That's one mystery solved!_

I squinted again at the bulletin, this time at the top of the caged rectangle of paper, in the hope of discovering how many days I had been missing for. I lifted the heavy, narrow frame as high as I could, in the attempt to read the date in the dim light from the night sky, but to no success. Annoyed, I let the frame drop back down onto the ground with a clatter and set to the task of trying to pry the sheet of paper out from behind the wire that held it. I managed to secure the top end of the paper through the narrow cage, where the hinge held together the two sides, with my fingers. I gave a pull and about seven inches of the paper slid out from behind the wire, and then stuck fast. I yanked again, but the paper refused to budge.

With a growl in irritation, I pulled violently at the paper, bashing the newsstand on the ground as I shook and rattled it in the effort to get the bulletin free. There was a tearing sound and suddenly the top portion of the headline came free from its cage and I stumbled backwards in surprise. I quickly checked the torn-off part of the paper in the dim light and, squinting hard to make out the small print, read the date.

_Shit_, I thought. _Must be an old one someone left out by mistake! It can't be 1997! That's years ago! Almost a decade!_

Frowning, I crumpled it up and tossed it over my shoulder in defeat. I'd just have to find a current newspaper tomorrow when the shops opened up. I left the newsstand where it lay and continued on down the street, stomping my feet and hugging myself again to keep warm.

I saw the bright lights of a car up ahead and stopped walking abruptly; two thoughts caught my attention simultaneously, one was the instinct to turn and run away, the other was to flag down the oncoming vehicle and ask for help. I struggled with the two alternatives, as the car steadily made its way down the street towards me. I could vaguely see the details of it as it patiently closed the gap between us; it was an old Volvo, which might have been red at one stage in its past, but was now so patched-up with repair to various damages from past accidents, that it looked like the metal equivalent of a patchwork toy-car. There were dents and obvious scratches all along the body, one of the doors hung on an odd angle from the frame, and it putted along the road like an old decrepit terrier with gastro.

I stood and stared at it as it drove up beside me and a window wound its squeaky way down; I had decided not to run, there hadn't seem to be any point trying to in my current condition. A face belonging to a gangly, elderly man craned out of the window to smile cheerfully up at me,

"'ello! Where're you of' to, young lady?" he said.

My teeth chattered while I pondered his question and assessed the possibilities that he might be: a) a serial killer, b) an old pervert who had mistaken me for a very modest prostitute, or c) a nice old fella who might drive me to the nearest homeless shelter. I mentally shrugged and decided to grant him the benefit of a doubt.

"N-n-no w-wh-where," I said, my teeth still chattering loudly. "Got n-n-nowh-where t-t-t-to be."

"'Op in then!" he replied with the same joviality. "I'll take ya over to Susan's, she's go' a shelter no' far from 'ere!"

"Oh, th- th- thanks!" I said and moved around the Volvo to the passenger's door.

A/N: To be continued... DADADADAAAA! What will happen in our next thilling adventure?! Will our Avi Tar find true love? Will Blacksun locate a toothpick? Find out in the next thrilling episode of "A Beginner's Guide to Dimensional Travel"! Same Bat-Time! Same Bat-Channel!


	6. Chapter 5

Disclaimer: The world of Harry Potter, and all characters therein, do not belong to me, I've merely borrowed a few of them JK Rowling for a little while. Oh, but the other characters (Reg, Susan, Aaron, Bridget, Philip and friends) are mine. Including the crazy one crouching in the corner and foaming at the mouth...

_**A Beginner's Crash-Course to Dimensional Travel**_

_By CalamityM_

**Chapter 5: The Importance Of Being Honest.**

"Whatever you do  
Don't tell anyone  
Whatever you do  
Don't tell anyone"

- Queens of the Stone Age, The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret

His name was Reginald Perry, though everyone called him Reg, and he _was_ a nice old fella, though he chatted a lot, as most old people do. He sat, slightly stooped, in the driver's seat of his car and talked almost non-stop except when he occasionally paused to let me answer one of his questions. He was a Londoner and had 'bin living there all his life', so he told me, and wasn't about to change anytime soon. He liked the city (or the 'Old Girl' as he put it), and sometimes even the people, and he had a little place set-up besides the Thames. It was a good place, he told me, if you ignored the smell that occasionally drifted in.

The inside of his car was as motley as its outside; for a start, there were various different coloured squares of carpet stapled to the inside of the body of the vehicle, including along the doors (with spaces cut out for the handles) and ceiling. There were empty drink cans and hundreds of lolly wrappers all over the floor, and a few pictures stuck up along the edge of the windscreen. There was a small tribe of dangling things hanging from the rear-view mirror, including a pair of fuzzy, purple dice and a small, framed picture of St. Christopher. And a dancing Hawaiian girl stuck to the dashboard with a large mass of Blu-Tack, next to a nodding, toy dog with a massive head. There were also dozens of empty biscuit tins, of various shapes and sizes, stacked up along the back seats; he explained to me (though I had politely refrained from asking) that he liked collecting them, as a sort of hobby.

He asked me where I was from, because he liked my accent. I quickly wondered whether I should lie in case he reported me to the cops as an illegal, and decided to tell him I was from the east; meaning the east of England and hoping he'd suggest a town or city that I could use as a reference later, should I need to lie again.

"Wha' like New Zealand?" he asked.

"Um, yes," I said weakly, because it was clear the British accent I had tried to put on was failing miserably. "Good guess!"

He smiled broadly; the wrinkles on his gaunt face bunching up to make room,

"Always bin good a' spottin' accents!" he told me cheerfully.

We drove a little way longer through the dark, deserted streets until we reached an area of the outer-skirts of the city, which hadn't been hit by the power-out. The shop windows and store fronts were gradually replaced by compacted and drab housing blocks and flats, through the windows of which pale and faint light shone; and the repressed silence of the dead streets gave way to the cosy silence of a sleeping neighbourhood.

We quietly drove along the street until Reg nodded towards a space between two cars parked alongside the pavement,

"Good of 'er to save me a spot," he said, squeezing his putting and spluttering vehicle into the gap. "Soon 'ave you a clean kit ta wear an' a warm bed for th' night!"

I looked out the grimy windows to see where he was indicating. Susan's shelter was a small, worn, double-storey building, whose flat front merged into its neighbouring buildings in such a way that it became part of a single, wide and tall wall stretching along the pavement. The only thing that distinguished it as a home was that the blank wall was equipped with a door and several windows, arranged so to give its occupants a view of the street outside, from both the first and second storeys.

I suddenly felt reluctant to enter the building, the blood-stains on my clothes suddenly very obvious to me - and no doubt they would be obvious in broad light, which was exactly what I could see coming out of the two windows beside the front door. I wondered what I could possibly say to convince them not to hand me in to the police, given my current condition, and suddenly felt the same tired hopelessness that had weighed heavily upon me before I had met Reg. What could I possibly say?

I heard a click as Reg unfastened his safety belt besides me, I kept mine fastened. If I was off to the cop-shop, what would be the point in getting out of the car?

"Reg?" I began. "There's something I should probably tell you."

He had just opened the car door, the rusty hinge whining loudly in compliance, but turned to look at me.

"Somethin' the matter?" he asked politely.

"Yeah, you could say that. Look, I was in a bit of a situation back there. You know, in the street you found me?" He nodded in comprehension and waited for me to continue. "There was some sort of attack, that's why all the lights were down; there were all these explosions in the street and I almost got caught-up in the middle of it! I managed to run away before I got seriously hurt, before the shit _really_ hit the fan, but I damn near died back there, Reg! I don't know if you noticed, but I'm a bit of a mess! Thing is-"

Great, now what? Thing is- I've been illegally imported into the country by persons unknown? I've been teleported into England from Australia? Spacemen abducted me and dropped me back here? I didn't know _what_ had happened, so how the hell was I meant to explain it to someone else!?

"I'm- I'm not here legally," I said simply. "The truth is, I'm not supposed to _be_ in England, and if I talk to the coppers about what happened, they'll probably deport me and I won't be allowed in ever again!"

I waited for his reply, watching his face for signs of anger or annoyance. He looked back at me, the car door still held partially open by his hand and a chilled breeze blowing in; his expression was unascertainable.

"I see," he said finally, pursing his lips in thought. "Well, ya wouldn't be th' first illegal we've 'ad! Come on!"

He pushed open the door and left me sitting dumbfounded in the car alone. He rapped on the roof and sound shook me out of my reverie; I hastened to unclasp my belt and hopped out of the car to join him.

"Never mind locking th' doors," he told me. "Noone'll take _my_ ol' bomb!"

He slammed his door shut and I followed suit (after finding a more gentle approach didn't close the door properly) and then followed him up to the doorstep of the little flat. He rapped on the green door - the paint on the wood flaky and peeling from what was possibly years without a fresh coat - and waited with the calm air of one with all the time in the world.

I shivered in the cold air and was relieved to hear the sound of locks being clicked open and latches sliding across. The door opened slightly, and through the gap behind a thin, taunt chain, peered the round face of a woman in her mid-forties. What little could be seen of the face broke into a wide smile. The door was promptly closed, the chain jingled, and then it was opened wide to allow Reg and myself to enter.

"Reg!" cried the woman, closing the door behind us and then flinging her arms around him to pull him into a hug. She was only a few inches shorter than he was - which wasn't really saying all that much, since he was quite short to begin with - but while he was gangly and lean, she was stocky and bordering on well rounded.

"Where 'ave you _been_? I 'aven't seen you 'round these parts a bit over two weeks! What 'ave you been doing with yourself, hm? Eating well? You don't look like you 'ave been; come 'ave some soup, there's still some warm on the stove! And who's this with you?"

I realised, amidst the onslaught of questions posed to Reg, that last question referred to me. I glanced at Reg, but he just gave me a wink (almost as if to say: "and you thought _I_ was bad!") and disappeared through an open doorway into the next room, leaving me to fend for myself.

"Um, hi," I said, smiling sheepishly and trying to pretend that I wasn't covered in someone else's blood. "My name's-"

"'Ere! What's all this?!" she suddenly said, her eyes wide with horror as she looked me over. "Look at the state of you!"

I opened my mouth to try to explain; slightly at a loss where to begin but deciding to recount the excuse I had given Reg and hoping in would suffice. Fortunately, Reg chose that precise moment to reappear in the kitchen doorway with a bowl in his hand.

"There was some sort of attack earlier this evenin', Susan. Probably the IRA. Bastards," he added, bitterly. "This poor girl was there! Innocent bystander, weren't ya?! (He glanced at me and I nodded quickly in assertion) Not 'er fault!"

"Oh, I heard about that!" replied Susan, slightly breathlessly. "It were on the news and all! There were a few nasty explosions over at the shops a few miles away, right scary it was, it being so close! Fancy that, explosions nearby our little neighbourhood! What _is_ this world coming to?!"

And with that she seemed to forgive me quickly for being covered in blood, in fact she seemed quite concerned for my well-being. Instead, she bustled me upstairs to a cupboard in the narrow hallway, pulled out some spare clothes for me to change into and bustled me into a bathroom to clean myself up and change. She showed me how to work the little gas-heater for the hot water, so that I could run myself a bath and then - as the water splashed into a large, deep, old-fashioned and stained porcelain bathtub - she left me to it.

I carefully placed the clean clothes on top of the lid of a hamper and got undressed. I pulled off my jacket to have a look at it and winched at the darkening mess splattered over its front; the deep red stain looked uncompromising and it was with reluctance that I knew it would have to be thrown away or burnt. So too would my jeans need to be destroyed, as – like the jacket – the denim was also soiled with blood. My t-shirt underneath had faired no better, but fortunately my underwear seemed untouched and my boots could be scrubbed. I removed the soiled garments, folded them up and placed them carefully in a corner of the bathroom to destroy later, and set to cleaning myself up.

There was no way I was going to sit in a bathtub in bloodied water, so I decided – though I was shivering terribly from cold, as I stood in my underwear over the drain in the floor – to sponge off as much of the blood as I could firsthand. Looking under the bathroom sink I found a sponge, a back-scrubber on a long stick, a chipped mug and a flannel in the cupboard. I placed them items on the floor and took off my underwear and scrubbed the sticky mess off my legs, arms and front; then got stuck into washing my hair, which had become matted with blood and dirt. I leaned forwards over the drain set in the floor and scrubbed soap into my scalp while I poured water through my hair with the mug; it took a while before my brown hair stopped trickling red, but finally it did. I thoroughly rinsed myself off with some more of the water in the bath using the mug and, satisfied that I wouldn't contaminate the clean water, I climbed into the tub.

Now I've never been a 'bath-person', always having preferred showers; but as the hot water soaked away the dull pain in my muscles and the aching chill in my body, I began to see how laying half-submersed in water could be found as relaxing. It was with some reluctance - almost ten-minutes later - that I finally got out, dried off and examined the spare clothes Susan had so charitably given me. I was glad to find that they were all in reasonably good condition and would give me quite a few layers of cloth between me and the cold; though I had to wonder how old some of the clothes actually were. I pulled on a fresh pair of underpants and a bra (which was about a cup too big, unfortunately) and searched around for the next layer to put on.

What I found, among the pile of clothes Susan had given me, was a t-shirt upon which the large slogan: "Garlic!!!! It's the BEST!!!!!! (Garlic Convention 1974)", was written across it, in bold, happily-deranged font and multiple exclamation marks - which clearly declared insanity. There was even a small, cartoon picture of a smiling clump of garlic on it, possibly to emphasise just how wonderful and loveable garlic truly was.

I stared at it for quite some time, before finally, and reluctantly, pulling it on over my head. As soon as my nose came level with the fabric I suddenly wondered, in horrified fascination, whether it had actually been washed since the last time it was worn. The t-shirt had a peculiar smell to it; it was as though the distance reminder of the garlic convention all those years ago, had somehow imprinted itself into the material. It was an imparted-memory that brought tears to the eyes.

I looked on the bright side; at least I wouldn't have to worry about head-lice. Any parasite would be driven away by the garlic smell. Them and the vampires.

I dressed quickly; pulling on some wool-leggings and then a pair of trousers and then adding layer upon layer of vests, jumpers and jackets over the 'garlic' t-shirt, not only to keep out the cold, but also in the hope that then the smell couldn't penetrate. When I was done, I had suddenly doubled in mass, becoming obese purely through padding. But I was also considerably warmer.

I pulled off one of the thicker jackets, for the time being, and hooked it up on a towel hook while I cleaned up the mess I had left in the bathroom (taking good care to thoroughly rinse out the cleaning equipment with scolding hot water before packing them away again in the cupboard) and pulled the plug to empty the tub. The job done, and the water gurgling nosily down the drain, I grabbed the jacket and my discarded boots, and went out into the hallway and down the stairs to see if Susan and Reg were still about.

I entered the kitchen feeling much better than I had when I had first stepped into Susan's home and was greeted with warm smiles from both Susan and Reg; they were seated around an oval, wooden table (which I noticed had a folded-up wad of paper under one leg) along with a young man who looked around his late-teens.

"Feeling better?" Susan asked me. I nodded. "Have some soup, won't you? It's got beef in it; it's quite good and it should bring the cold out o' ya."

I fetched a clean bowl from the dish-rack and ladled some soup into it as Susan continued,

"This here is Aaron, he's been stayin' with us for 'bout a year now, 'avn't you Aaron?"

Aaron smiled and agreed that he had, and when Susan turned back round to talk to me he gave me a wink and I smiled in return.

We chattered for a while and Susan explained to me that she received quite a few lost youths who took up residence in her little home; she liked the company of young people, she explained, even though she was probably one of the few people her age that did (with the exception of Reg, she assured me). There were two other youths living at Susan's, she went on to say: Bridgett, who I would be sharing a room with; and Philip, who was a lovely lad but tended to stutter when he was nervous, so I might want to be patient when talking with him.

I was just starting to assure her that I would be, when I heard a knock on the kitchen door. Reg rose from his seat, as he was closest, and went to open it; striding in through the doorway and past Reg without so much as a 'hello', before busying herself with putting her coat up on the coat-rack, was a girl who had to be about fourteen or fifteen, not so much as dressed as partially-dressed in a small pair of denim shorts, a tank-top and high-heels that gave her an extra seven-inches to her height. The voluminous bangles, necklaces and dangling earrings she was wearing jangled, jingled and clattered as she moved in her stiff, almost restrained, jerking movements and whenever she flicked the long strains of her high-lighted hair back over her shoulders. She had a tight, sour expression on her face like she had just eaten a lemon and wore such heavy makeup (most of it glittery) that I wouldn't have been surprised if it had been sprayed on with a high-velocity airbrush.

"Oh, Bridget, dear! We were just telling out new boarder about you!" said Susan jovially.

Bridget looked at me with an expression of pure hatred, as though I had just openly offended her in some way, and I immediately wished that Susan had offered me the couch in the lounge room instead,

"I don' 'av ta giv' up me bed, do I?" she snapped at Susan.

"No, of course not, dear," said Susan tactfully. "We've got the foldout, remember? She'll be sleeping on that in yo- in the same room you're in."

Bridget didn't look very impressed, but she didn't argue anymore either. She strode over to the sink, snatched up a bowl and, still glancing over at me with an expression of great dislike, helped herself to some soup. She sat down and ate it in angry silence, refusing to join in with the discussion that finally stared up once more and then glared at me from the opposite side of the table for the rest of the night until we all finally retired to bed. Susan made up the single, foldout bed for me to sleep in, with some fresh sheets and blankets, and all the while I helped her with it I could feel Bridget glaring at me as she sat on her own bed with her arms crossed.

* * *

A/N: To be continued... at some point in time... maybe... definitely eventually... yep, any time soon... any minute now... 

Wait for it...

Wait for it...

Okay, maybe you should try coming back next week.


	7. Chapter 6

Disclaimer: The world of Harry Potter, and all characters therein, do not belong to me, I've merely borrowed a few of them JK Rowling for a little while. Oh, but the other characters (Reg, Susan, Aaron, Bridget, Philip and friends) are mine. Including the crazy one crouching in the corner and foaming at the mouth, the big doggie, and the JarMeanies (you'll see).

_**A Beginner's Crash-Course to Dimensional Travel**_

_By CalamityM_

**Chapter 6: Dreamt A Little Dream**

"Sweet dreams till sunbeams find you,  
Sweet dreams that leave all worries behind you,  
But in your dreams whatever they be,  
Dream A Little Dream Of Me."

- Doris Day, The Mamas and the Papas, Michael Buble and pretty-much everyone.

It was on going to sleep that night, that I had time to reflect on what had happened to me that day – and though I was tired, I was kept awake by the insistent buzzing of unresolved questions in my head; that, and the loud snoring from Bridget in the bed across the room. I realized – in a strange, distant way – that I was still in shock; my body felt lethargic and my emotions were numb, and though I was quite aware that I ought to be screaming and crying hysterically, I was very calm and unmoved. I couldn't _feel_ for the man I had – indirectly, I strongly believed – killed that day; and that worried me. I couldn't focus on what was happening, it just didn't feel real. The facts were of little help to me, as they were as deceptive in their oddness as the possibilities; since there was no way in which I could possibly have time-traveled, of that I was almost certain! Well… maybe.

And then there was the matter of Blacksun. I think it was her presence that troubled me the most: I had always thought she was imaginary. I couldn't recall the earliest image I had had of her - lurking at the back of my mind like some malevolent nightmare - but when she had appeared the visions of her were brutal, savage and more than slightly chilling. I had thought her little more than just a character to a book I'd might one day write; or a comic I might one day have the talent to illustrate. Apparently she had had other ideas...

Was I going insane? She couldn't be real. And yet she had felt so much so; and so much more than just a figment of my imagination. Was Blacksun a fevered delusion; a split personality for me to hide behind? I tried to push those thoughts aside, for the time being, and focus on falling asleep. Tomorrow was going to be a big day.

* * *

I dreamt that I was in a large storeroom; so large it was like as endless maze of metal shelves. Shadows and smoky-mist gently and slowly drifted around the ground between the shelves and along the floor; and a baleful half-light illuminated the platforms and their contents. Each of the shelves were filled to their edges with various glass jars of many different shapes, sizes and colours; each containing, in their murky depths, their own unique pickled matter. 

I wandered through the aisles, peering through the clear glass of each jar in turn and puzzling over the floating contents inside, my bare feet kicking up the mist as I went. One jar contained corn cobs of various types; the usual yellow, a few whites, one or two odd, Mexican red ones, as well as a few black; all of which bobbed around in the jar in their vinegar. In another jar floated small pickled onions in a blue-dyed liquid; they floated about unaided, and as they slowly turned I noticed that each one had a blue spot on one side. I frowned and moved on quickly to the next jar; inside were pickled apricots that looked suspiciously like shriveled ears and I quickly hurried on.

My eyes drifted across the shelves, idly examining each of the jars; and, for whatever reason it was that took me, I stopped in front of a jar of chillies. The jar was tall and narrow with a latch-top lid keeping the contents air-sealed; inside, packed in tightly, were hundreds of chillies of various shapes and even more varying colours, all compressed and pickled in vinegar. I looked at them with mild interest before something extraordinary happened,

"Hey, how's it goin'?"

I stared. Two of the chillies, pinched together at the ends, had just formed into a mockery of a mouth and talked to me.

"There a problem?" said two other chillies above the first pair.

I kept staring, not quite sure what to say.

"You look a little unwell, maybe it was something you ate?" another pair suggested.

"Stop that!" I finally snapped. "Stop talking! You're chillies! You can't talk!"

"Oh?" said the first pair. "We are, are we? Are you sure? I mean, _really_ sure? For that matter, are you sure about anything at all? You don't even know when or where you are; you don't even know what you're doing here! So how can you be really sure abut anything?!"

"Well I'm sure you're just a jar of chillies! And chillies don't talk!"

"Why not? They were part of something that was alive once, weren't they?"

"That was a plant!" I said, and there was a slightly unpleasant feeling rising up in me. One I didn't really want to focus on at that moment.

"Was it?" asked the chillies contemptuously. "Was it really? Okay, so this is a jar of chillies and that over there is a jar of pickled apricots, and over _there_ is a jar of eyes- no, sorry, I meant onions. Right?"

"Shut up," I said.

"Just trying to understand where you're coming from!" said the chillies petulantly. "Aren't I allowed to be understanding? You certainly weren't, were you; _Muggle_?"

"Shut up! Just shut up!"

But they were laughing at me now, each pair of chillies in the jar all forming their own little mouth and laughing mockingly at me.

"Shut up! Shut up, you bastard! It wasn't me!"

"You let her out," replied one of the pairs over the laughter of its brethren. "You let her out! And look what terrible things she's done!"

"I didn't let her out! She snuck out when my back was turned!" I cried.

"Murderer!" said a pair.

"Monster!" said another.

"I'm not!" I wailed. "Shut up! It wasn't me! I didn't do it! It was _her_!"

But they had all joined in, each shouting out it's own accusation. I was crying uncontrollably and trying hard to reason with them but they wouldn't listen.

"_Dreamer, pay them no attention! They are only figments in your imagination,"_said a voice behind me.

I turned around in surprise to look for the newcomer and saw a large, white-furred wolf standing calming in the aisle and looking up at me.

"_Do not be alarmed. This is an attempt by your brain to make sense of what is happening to you,"_it stated.

"It- it is?"

"_Yes, Dreamer, it is. You must focus on the facts now, you must work out how to leave this world in order to return to your own."_

"What? What do you mean: _this_ world? I'm on another planet?!"

"_No, you are in another realm,"_explained the wolf, patiently. _"This is the same planet, but in a different Possibility. A different realm of reality to the one you originated from. This is another possibility for the same Material Plane; one in which you do not belong. You must return home, Dreamer; your existence here disrupts the balance between the realms."_

"What? Why? How does my being here disrupt the balance?"

"_Because-"_started the wolf, but it was too late.

I had been woken up. I discovered, in my hazy state, that someone had thrown a shoe at me. It was still on the bed, sitting on top of the blankets, and my arm still hurt where it had hit me. It fell off as I rolled over and I heard Bridget reprimanding me,

"You're snoring!" she complained. "How 'm I to sleep when you're snoring like a pig?!"

I mumbled 'sorry', even though I would have preferred to point out her own obvious nasal-symphonies; but I decided that sleep was more important right now than a mid-night debate. I rolled back over and tried to fall asleep again. When I finally managed to, the dream was gone, and so was the wolf.

The next day Reg took me in his car to a local café, in the hopes that I would find some work. The owner was an old friends of his; though I was beginning to get the feeling that most of the people around the neighbourhood were old friends of Reg's, since everyone we walked passed – whether they were customers or store-owners – seemed to know and recognize the old guy quite fondly. The café owner's name was Paul and he spoke in an accent I couldn't place (but Reg later told me was one-part Brazilian, one-part Yorkshire and the rest was Londoner). The work was mostly as a kitchen-hand, until I mentioned to Paul that I had some prior waitressing experience, and then I found myself waiting tables for the rest of the day. It was hard work, but satisfying and it took my mind off my current problems, and by the end of my six-hour shift I had eighteen-pounds in my pocket and an invite from Paul to come back and work for him the next day.

Reg came to pick me up and was pleased by what Paul had to say about me.

"You'll do well, girl," he told me later, while he was driving me back to Susan's. "Paul's not usually impressed all tha' readily! You must've worked ya arse off! Best no' over do it though, or he'll expect tha same each time ya go there!"

We went to the supermarkets, before Susan's, to pick up some supplies; and I grabbed a British Sci-fi mag to breeze through at the checkouts and Reg encouraged me to throw it in with the shopping,

"'Aven't seen a good sci-fi movie since Back-to-the-Future!" he said cheerfully as we loaded the shopping bags into the boot of the car (there was no point trying to fit them into the backseat with all the biscuit-tins in the way). I agreed that I had liked the series and we chattered about them on the way back to Susan's place.

Unloading the car and packing away the groceries I couldn't help but feel a little peculiar; I knew it was the year 1997, I knew that I was somehow in London, but what I couldn't work out was whether all of the events that I had been through were real – and that I had gone back in time, and the Harry Potter story had in fact been true all along – or if it was some sort of bizarre dream I was having. It was the ordinariness of the day I had just had that was throwing me; everything had been completely acceptable as normal.

Unlike my usual dreams it wasn't an illusion of normality, but real, hard, boring normality itself; there was nothing that had happen that day to suggest that my experiences were in any way dream-like; no hazy vision or discolouration, no distorted communication with those around me (or the dreams in which everyone would be speaking another language but you could still understand them completely; the green-grocer I had met that day had an Scottish accent so thick I could scarcely understand him, so I knew it couldn't be one of those dreams!), or people turning into animals or objects but still engaging you in polite conversation. No, it was real: dull, everyday, pointless, uneventful, mundane and real.

I didn't know where that left me and it certainly didn't explain the references to the 'Potter' series that I had witnessed, but so long as it continued to be dull and ordinary there wasn't much reason in me worrying too much about it. At least that's what I told myself.


	8. Chapter 7

Disclaimer: The world of Harry Potter, and all characters therein, do not belong to me, I've merely borrowed a few of them for a little while.

A/N: Mind you, it probably hasn't escaped anyone's attention that there is very little reference to canon characters and there is good reason for this: the only one who knows how the canon characters might react to situations and events outside of the experiences of the Harry Potter books, is JK Rowling. For this very reason (and this reason alone) I am somewhat hesitant to use them. Of course I intend to eventually; as this is a Harry Potter_ fan-fic_ I must, but I do so with hesitation.

Of course there is the justified question as to why I would bother writing a fan-fic in the first place; quite simply, it is because I've never done so before. As mentioned in the summery, this is an experiment in progress; a test to see if I can write a story set in someone else's world (many professional authors have written for someone else's world; look no further than the Aliens novels, the StarTrek novels, or any novel based in a role-play game campaign setting - such as Shadowrun or Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk).

**So without further ado: on with the experiment!**

WARNING: CONTAINS DEPICTIONS OF VIOLENCE. May also contain dark humour, coarse language, bad spelling and poor hygiene.

_**A Beginner's Crash-Course to Dimensional Travel**_

_By CalamityM_

**Chapter 7: The Kindness of Strangers.**

"It ain't that in their hearts they're bad  
They can comfort you, some even try  
They nurse you when you're ill of health  
They bury you when you go and die"

- Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, People They Ain't No Good

The day began the same as every day had for the past three weeks that I had been at Susan's; I was rudely shaken awake by Bridgett who seemed to find sadistic glee in disturbing my sleep, and was then forcefully hurried out of the bedroom so that she could change in private. I had learnt to keep my change of clothes in the hallway cupboard so that I could quickly get dressed in the bathroom, so Bridgett's morning temper-tantrums didn't bother me too much. I breakfasted with Reg, Susan and the two male boarders, Aaron and Philip (Bridgett spent two hours getting dressed each morning, so at least I didn't have to put up with her at the breakfast table) and then strolled down the street to the bus stop with Philip.

We chatted for a while, Philip and I, as we sat on the bench at the bus stop. I quite liked talking with Philip, who was witty and funny in his own nervous way, though he had difficulty in holding eye contact with anyone and instead looked down at his sweaty hands as he wrung them together. We had chatted a lot over the course of the past few weeks and it seemed to me that he probably appreciated my company as a much-needed, pleasant change from Bridget's. Susan had mentioned in passing that he had had a troubled up-bringing; and though she hadn't specifically said anything, it was obvious to me that Susan had thought very little of the woman who had been Philip's sole parent for the twelve of his fifteen years of life. I never pressed Philip for details, of course; but I had noticed sometimes that there was almost a sad, needy look in his eyes whenever he saw Susan embrace anyone else other than him.

We talked awhile about science-fiction movies and favourite stories until a trail of buses arrived and we parted ways as I caught the bus to Paul's café. Getting there and starting the working day, I found the shift was the same as always; busy breakfast crowd, break, followed by busy lunch crowd, followed by another break, and by the end of it I was tired and footsore and ready for a long, hot bath. I bought an apple from the greengrocer's to appease my grumbling stomach and headed back to the bus stop to wait. There was a line, as always, and I entertained myself for a while by eavesdropping on the conversations of my follow bus patrons. The most entertaining were the quintuplet of teenage girls chattering animatedly about one of the girls' new crush.

I was letting my mind wonder, amidst the sound of their excited chattering, and pondering whether I should ignore my aching feet and go wander around the shops instead of busing back to Susan's immediately; when a series of low-pitched, cracking-sounds (like a starting gun) caught my attention. I looked around for the source of the sound and what I saw made my blood run cold: there were several figures, each cloaked and hooded, walking calmly down the middle of the street. A few drivers honked and tooted their horns in irritation, as they swerved around the hooded persons before pulling to a stop. More cars came to an immediate halt and the traffic started to back up. All the while, the figures calmly strode through the traffic jam. Around me, and all along the street, a crowd of on-lookers had started to gather along the pavement to watch the show.

I felt sick. Anxiety chewed at the inside of my stomach and I had a horrible feeling that I knew what was going to come next, as the crowd slowly grew in number as more gawkers left what they were doing – abandoning stores and parked cars – to try to see what was going on. I could hear the teenage girls chattering excitedly, while I stood paralyzed in disbelief.

One angry driver made the mistake of getting out of his car to yell abuse at the closest figure to him, I saw him start aggressively gabbing his finger at the figure's hooded head, standing mere feet away from where they stood; and the figure stopped and turned to face him – and then casually reached under its cloak and drew out a long, straight stick that they pointed at the man's head. A blast of flame issued forth from the tip of the stick, catching the man full in the face, and the driver fell to the ground, his head blackened and still smouldering. And all hell broke loose.

There was a feeling of sudden, mad panic everywhere and the crowd of pedestrians who had stopped to watch the proceedings suddenly turned into a stampede. I was suddenly shaken from my stupor as someone shoved me out of the way. I grabbed the edge of the bus shelter to stop my fall and then quickly climbed up onto it to avoid being crushed; I clung onto its roof, staring down at the pigeon-spotted roof of the small building rather than have to witness the bloody pandemonium below. People were screaming in terror and pain and the cries of help from the injured went unheard as the panicked mob pushed on and crushed them underfoot. An explosion startled me and I clung on more tightly in fright. And mixed in with the screams and pleads of desperation I also heard laughter.

A few cars suddenly lifted from the ground, their drivers screaming for a brief moment in shock and horror before their vehicles smashed down upon those behind them. I saw a flicker of light zigzag past and the storefront of the shop that stood a few metres from the bus shelter suddenly exploded outwards. Fragments of broken glass pelted the struggling crowd of pedestrians and the drivers fleeing from their cars; slicing through some of them and bloodily, maiming many others. I could only stare helplessly as the remaining injured survivors tried to drag themselves away from the threat that gleefully pursued them, the hooded figures laughing and calling out mockingly to those attempting to flee. Jets of flame hit a few of the fleeing civilians and they burned, twisting and flailing and screaming shrilly, before dropping to the ground.

My panic gripped me as I gripped the top of the shelter and even though I wanted to run, I couldn't bring myself to move, even as the stench of smoke and the sounds of carnage carried on around me. I was in absolute disbelief; this wasn't real, this couldn't be real, I reasoned with myself that this all had to be some twisted, sick dream, some terrible nightmare I would soon wake from. There was another explosion, this time the shop closer to the bus stop and the sudden rush of hot air made it painfully clear to me that this wasn't a dream and if I was stupid enough to stay were I was I was sure to be killed.

As the smoke bellowed out of the ruined store and into the street I took the opportunity to climb quickly down off the shelter and – stepping over the crumpled, still bodies of the dead and trying not to look too closely – dashed towards the closest back lane between two shops. I ran down the narrow side street with my heart pounding in my throat and my head throbbing, but as I neared the other end of the street I felt certain that I was safe. It was not a certainty that lasted.

A crowd of people poured into the side street towards me, all of them looking maddened with fear and blind with terror, as they bore down upon where I stood. Certain they would kill me in their haste to get away, I turned back around to try and escape in the opposite direction. I ran as fast as I could but they were faster still, and a shove from behind sent me sprawling to the ground, where I was stomped on by the uncaring mob. I curled into a ball with my arms up around my head to protect myself, as I was accidentally kicked and stepped on; and I was sure I was going to die, until someone lifted me bodily off the ground and pulled me to the side of the lane as the rest of the crowd surged onwards.

I looked up at my rescuer I found myself in the arms of a dark-skinned man in his late thirties, with highlights in his dark hair and a frown upon his features. He looked down at me and spoke with a deep, cockney accent,

"You a' righ'?" he asked me, and I nodded painfully. "Look, you jus' stick wi' me, righ'?"

Before I could even answer, he clasped my hand and pulled me down the lane again, back towards the street he and the crowd had come down. He stayed close to the ground and I followed his lead, crouching low and trying to make myself an inconspicuous as possible. We came to the end of the side street and he peered out around the corner before pulling me onwards. The street was in ruins; upturned cars were still ablaze with black smoke pouring out of them, some of their wheels still turning slowly, and charred figures still burned in their seats. I turned my gaze quickly away and choked back a sob.

My companion hurried me over to another alleyway set between two stores on the opposite side of the street, the two of us running around the abandoned cars, and we ran down the narrow space until we came to a junction and then turned and headed down another alleyway. I tried to keep up with my silent saviour as he led me around another corner and down another path through the back-ways of the streets, but my feet kept tripping up from a mixture of clumsy fear and fatigue.

Finally he stopped running and paused at another corner, a look of intense concentration on his face, I was about to ask what was wrong when I heard the voices for myself,

"Look, let's jus' go join th' others, yeah? No point standin' 'round 'ere, is dere?" said the first male voice, and I peered around my companion to see whom it was that lurked around the corner. I saw two hooded figures standing idly in the alleyway having a mildly heated conversation, if the gestures of one of them were anything to go by.

"He said to wait," said the other, stubbornly.

The first figure made an exasperated sound,

"Oh bloody 'ell! If we jus' stand 'round 'ere all day, we'll never get ta 'ave any fun!" he complained. "Come on! We'll be righ' back! We'll jus' kill a couple o' them muggles-"

"He said: _wait_!" snapped the other.

I didn't realise that he was about to move, and he clearly didn't realise that I was craning around him to see them, but my companion suddenly turned to retreat down the alleyway only to accidentally bump into me. Though it was a gentle collision and we both remained upright, the sudden scrape of our shoes kicking up the gravel was certain to be enough to draw the attention of the two hooded figures. There was a long pause, in which my companion and I made neither a sound nor any movement, and then the voice of the second figure rang out clearly over the quiet,

"Looks like it's your lucky day," he said and I heard the other figure laugh and start towards us.

I was frozen to the spot with fear but my dark-skin friend was already in movement; as the hooded figure turned the corned towards us, my companion brought his foot up and around to connect with the hooded figure's head. There was a loud thump and the figure was flung sideways to impacted heavily against the wall and then crumpled to the ground. There was a brief cry of surprise and the second figure started forwards, drawing a long, straight stick from the recesses of his cloak.

"Look out!" I yelled.

My new friend looked up at the figure bearing down on him and stepped quickly to intercept. There was a tense moment when the tip of the hooded figure's stick glowed as he pointed at my companion's head; but my friend was far too quick for him and knocked the figure's hand away before bringing up the ball of his palm to met the most likely area that the hooded figure's chin would be. It had clearly been a lucky guess and the second figure was lifted off his feet, only to be helped towards the ground by a swift sidekick by my brave new friend.

I moved towards him and was about to congratulate my companion, a wide, and amazed, grin plastered on my face; but the sudden sound of angrily yelled words took me by surprise,

"_Avada Kedavra_!"

And the next thing I knew a bolt of vibrant green light had shot past and struck my companion in the back. He hit the ground with a heavy thud and I felt my heart do the same; I stared, not quite able to accept what I had just seen, at his still form laying there on the concrete. I stood shocked-still, my head spinning and my heart beating hard; and all the while, buried in the back of my mind behind my stunned disbelief, my instincts were screaming at me to run.

_Jesus_, I thought, dizzily. _Jesus, they just killed him! They're really Death Eaters! It's really real!_

They were moving now, getting up off the ground and growling and grumbling in irritation as they rubbed their injuries; before turning their attentions onto me. My gaze turned from my friend's still body to watch their approach, but I still remained dumbstruck. One of the hooded figures raised his arm – and it was as though I was watching a slowed image on film, his motions seemed almost exaggerated in their timing, as he brought his hand up level with my head, the tip of the wand glowing faintly.

_R__unrun__runrun__run__runrun__runrun__RUN!_

Adrenalin kicked in and my body, suddenly receiving orders directly from my Lizard-brain and not my incoherent frontal lobes, turned and flung sidewards as a jet of green lightning arched overhead where I had only just been standing moments before. I hit the ground, rolled back onto my feet and sprinted down the alley before I was even aware that I had moved. My lungs burned and my chest felt tight and cramped, my heartbeat pounded in my ears and my head ached; but I was still alive! I ran desperately down the shadowed alleyways, letting my feet lead me wherever they might, and silently praying to any kind gods to get me out of there!

There was a loud, sudden sound, like a starting pistol or a car backfiring, and I leaped again just as another blast of discharged magic crackled overhead. I heard a man swearing and cussing mere feet away from me, and took to my heels again.

_Cheating, murderous bastard! He's teleporting! How the hell is that fair?!_I thought, rebounding painfully off a wall as I made a sharp-turn down another alley to get away.

I saw a street up ahead at the alley's mouth and – muscles complaining bitterly – tried to gain speed and headed towards it as fast as I was able. I heard another loud crack a few feet away and almost lost my lunch in fright as my pursuer was suddenly in front of me! I skidded on the gravel-strewn concrete, desperately trying to reverse direction, lost my footing and fell backwards; my feet kicked out into air and my shoulders and head hit the ground first. Winded, I laid on the cold ground, feeling sick and dizzy with concussion, my head aching more than ever. Feeling sure I was about to pass out, I heard someone sniggering in the shadows.

Though he was hooded, and I'd never seen his face or even meet him before, I knew it was the same guy who'd been chasing me the whole time; I heard him stepping towards me as casual as could be, while I laid there with the wind knocked out of me. And I _knew_ he knew that he had all the time in the world,

"Well, that was impressive!" he commented, walking right up next to me to stand above me like a stooping vulture. "Nice lil' flip you did there, muggle; what'd ya do for an encore?"

_Juggle_, I thought irritably.

I heard him chuckle and he nudged me in the ribs with the toe of his boot,

"Aw, poor lil' thing, you feelin' a bit winded are ya? Bet that head of yours' spinnin', that's what ya get when ya think you can out-run a wizard! Stupid muggle, did ya really think you can run from my magic?!"

He seemed to feel that a kick was called for and I grunted in pain as his foot hit me in the side,

"You're thick, you are, all you muggles! What was your boyfriend playin' at, eh? Kick me in the bloody head, eh?!"

I received another kick, but didn't bother to point out that _I_ hadn't kicked him in the head – while sending my gratitude up into the Heavens, to my brief friend, for having done so. But I kept silent, as I didn't think the psycho would have taken backtalk well.

"What have you caught, Francis?" enquired a silky, male voice and I saw the man above me turn to look over his shoulder. I moved my head slightly to see where it was he was looking and saw the outline of several figures walking towards us from the street beyond the alley, and almost passed out; there was no way I was going to get out of this!

_Wait_…

"Francis?" I giggled.

The first Death Eater turned his attentions back down on me, quite abruptly,

"I wouldn't laugh if I was in your situation, muggle!" snarled Francis.

"Sure you would," I replied, wearily. "If you'd been through half the shit I've been through today, you'd be hysterical too."

Francis didn't seem to think I was very funny and I suddenly felt the underside of a boot pushed down on my face, my head turned roughly to press my cheek against the coarse ground as he put his weight down. I grappled with his foot, trying to get my fingers between his boot and my cheek and push it off me, but he had far more weight than I did strength.

"_Don't you smart-mouth me, you little_-!" he started.

"That will be all, Francis," said the other Death Eater, almost sounding bored, and Francis removed his boot off my head. "Honestly, how did such a little muggle give you so much trouble?"

"She-" started Francis, but the other Death Eater intervened.

"That was a rhetorical question, you idiot," he said and the small group around him sniggered and guffawed. They slowly and unhurriedly circled around me where I still laid in motionless panic.

"Well," he continued. "You seemed to have caught your breath, muggle, now get up!"

_Gods help me_! I thought feverishly.

I felt a strange, cold sensation in the back of my skull and it carried on like cold water trickling down the back of my head, all the way down my spine. A sound, tiny at first, but steadily growing in volume, had suddenly started up inside my head; like a soft, wailing.

_e__eeee__eeeeee__eeeee__eeeeeiiiii…_

I stood up on my shaky legs and tried to breathe normally, but in my anxiety and panic I was beginning to hyperventilate. The second Death Eater watched me balefully through the slits of his hood with dark, narrowed eyes. I blinked in sudden, and inappropriate, perplexity as I realised that his irises were as black as his pupils; _what the hell?!_

"Is there a problem, muggle? You looked confused. Are you so idiotic that you are oblivious to the danger in which you are in; or perhaps you had struck your head a little too hard?" there was another chorus of chuckles and sniggers. "Perhaps you need some assistance; let me give you an example of the danger you are in."

He raised his wand level to my chest and before I could even think to dodge out of the way, I had been struck with a sensation so painful that dropped me back down onto my knees, screaming. I curled into a ball, my head hitting the ground, and rocked violently from side-to-side trying to shake the spell from my body, but the pain kept coming regardless. The hooded-man just wouldn't relent, even when I started trying to crawl away along the ground, screaming for it to stop.

_i__iiiiii__iii__iiii__iiiiiiiiieeeeeeee__eee__eeee__eeeee__eeeeeeee…_

_For Christ's sake stop! _I thought, while I screamed on; and finally the pain did. But the wailing got louder.

"Get up, muggle," he calmly said.

I lay panting on the ground, wishing vindictively that his head would just explode, before rolling into a crouching position and attempting to get to my feet; I stumbled a few times, landing back down on my arse (and the Death Eater crowd roared with laughter), before I finally stood up once more. There was a strange, numb feeling in me, and I once again felt as though reality had just walked out on me unexpectedly; nothing made sense any more. Here existed Death Eaters, here existed magic, and here existed the man named Snape; it was too unbelievable to believe.

"You see, Francis, a typical muggle can be trained to follow simple commands if one takes to time and effort to train them," said the maybe-Snape, amidst another group session of laughter at my expense.

_Even if you are Snape,_I thought, venomously. _Even if this is all pretence and you're still 'good', I hope you choke on shit, you bastard!_

He looked me in the eyes again and I quickly looked down at my feet.

"Oh look, the muggle's shy," he said, with dripping sarcasm, and stepped forward to use the tip of his wand to push my chin up so that I met his eyes. "Now, now. There's no need to be shy…"

I gulped but couldn't look away, and I could hear my own traitorous thoughts gibbering inside my head,

IsitSnape?! Itcan'tbeSnape! Itcan! No, itsimpossible, he's- It'snotreal, it'sjustaboo- Butlookathiseyes- Don'tlook! Don'tlook! Turnaway! Hecanseeyour-

He frowned suddenly and I knew he had got at least the jest of what I was thinking,

_Pink! Rabbits!_I thought desperately. _Giant, pink rabbits! Boing, boing! Little Mr Floppsey!_

It was too late; he snatched his wand away and stepped backwards from me, glaring at me in confusion. He snarled at me and I instantly knew I was a dead-person; I just hadn't died yet.

"How-" he started, then he seemed to relax a little and when he spoke next his voice had taken on a forced calm. "You and I should have a little chat, muggle. I would very much like to see just how many tricks one might be able to teach such a clever little muggle like yourself…"

_Oh. Crap! _I thought, feeling faint.

_e__eee__eeee__eeeee__eeeeeeeeiiiiiiiiiI- I- I- I, am! Watching. Eyes. Seeing…_

_Oh bigger crap!_

And she was there; lurking so very close in my mind, halfway between my consciousness and my subconscious. I saw Snape blink in bewilderment and wondered what it was he was seeing inside my mind; rising up from the depths…

_I am- I am- I am. Skinnnn. Fleshh. Tearing…_

_No, no! Go back, Blacksun! I can deal with this!_

_Ffffiiinnnn-gerrrrsssss. Skinnnn and bone. Tearing. Motionss, with handsss… raiisssed…_

"Wh-what?!" he said, taking another step back. The other Death Eaters were looking at him now, looking for some indication of what he wanted them to do. Francis was raising his wand at me while frequently glancing quickly sideways at Snape and looking quite edgy.

"Wha' is it?" asked Francis. "Wha's the matter, Snape?"

_Crap. Don't. Blacksu- I'm okay! Just go back!_I gripped my head with my hands and tried to will her back down again, but she was getting stronger.

_Raaaiiisssed to skyeee. And blood fallsss…fallllssss down like rainnnn. And I- I- I see, I to eyee!_

_I- I can handle this! It's okay, I-_everything started to go dark, my vision seemed to blur and I felt as though I was slowly falling. I saw her in my mind's eye, floating up from the deep depths of my mind, and as we passed – she moving upwards, I falling downwards – she smiled wildly at me, her mad eye bright and staring with insane delight.

_No!_I thought, panic-stricken. _No! Don't! I don't know if he's evil! Don't kill him!_

I could still see, somewhat, through my blurry vision, as my hands raised through their own accord and reached towards Francis. He turned and stared at me in puzzlement and I felt myself moving quickly towards him all-of-a-sudden, far faster than I've ever been able to move before. He gave a brief cry before my fingers sunk into his throat and pulled the flesh away, releasing a red mist of arterial spray into the air. And blood did fall like a fine shower of rain. I recoiled in horror, inside my own head, as he fell to his knees and clasped at the hole in his neck while blood coursed out between his fingers.

There was a flurry of movement and startled yells all around me, but she/I moved and ducked aside with inhuman ease as magic blazed around and above me. She/I closed in on another Death Eater and he saw us coming; his eyes opening wide with terror, he raised his wand to protect himself. I heard Blacksun laughing with my voice, high and wildly, as she/I ducked under his arm as he cast his spell and then she/I plunged my hand into his side. I heard and felt the bone snap under the blow; and the blood splash up my arm, as my hand tore through the flesh to grasp the long piece of bone that had been dislodged. I heard his screams as I felt her/myself brutally pull the broken piece of rib from his chest, before she/I spun around in a tight circle and stabbed it up inwards through his eye. He hit the ground dead, the shard of rib driven through his brain.

I felt her turn to watch as the Death Eaters ran to get out of arms-reach of us, all except one. He stood there staring at us through narrowed eyes, his wand pointing directly at my heart, while the remaining Death Eaters – the ones that had not died or fled – cowered behind him.

"Let's go, Snape!" insisted one of them, trying to attract his attention. "Let's get out of here!"

But Snape stood his ground; and either he hadn't heard his fellow Death Eater, or he was ignoring him. Snape pulled his hood off his head with a sudden, jerky movement, and I wondered, horror-stricken, if it had been in order to see her/me coming better. Was he really going to take Blacksun on?! His sallow face was gaunt and shining with sweat, his brow furrowed and eyes narrowed, his teeth clenched in a snarl,

"What are you?!" he said, through gritted teeth.

"_I- I- iiieee-_ I am angry, blood-rage. I am madness, crazed-heart. I am eater, defeater – and murder in the dark!" said Blacksun, using my voice.

_Not him!_I pleaded with her. _Not him!_

Snape snarled, Blacksun grinned; and as he opened his mouth to utter a curse she headed towards him with her/my hands out-raised.

_Noooo!_I screamed and pulled myself up from the mid-way between my consciousness and my subconscious. She had closed in on him, twisting sidewards to avoid his curse and lunging towards Snape with a grin on her/my face and her/my hands reaching towards his neck. _I_ pulled my hands away, with as much will as I could muster, and I felt her/me pause in mid-movement and her/my eyes grow wide in surprise. She/I hit the ground and rolled up onto her/my feet and I could feel her confusion. I rose from my unconsciousness, the fog lifting from my vision, to find Snape staring into my eyes, barely a metre away.

_Not him!_I told her. _Not him! We don't know-_

Snape had recovered from his shock and raised his wand again and I could feel Blacksun growl and move cautiously along the ground on her/my hands and feet in a crouched position.

_Wait, just listen to me! Please! Just run away!_

"Are you still in there, muggle?" said Snape, quietly. Blacksun grinned.

"_I- I-_ I, am the eater of the eaters of Death. I gorge on their bones and flesh. I eat their sins and their sssscreammmsssss…" I felt her tense up to pounce.

"No!" I yelled, just as our feet left the ground and she/I had lunged, again, towards Snape. But I had slowed her movements too much and she moved too slow to dodge this time and I felt a strange, cold feeling hit me in the chest where it begun to burn. And the whole world had suddenly gone green.

I didn't notice when I hit the ground, my face impacting against the gravel. I could feel myself falling away again, deep down into the recess of my mind, and all the while I could hear Blacksun screaming and shrieking in fury and pain. Everything around me was a brilliant, blazing green; burning and flickering like copper-fire. I felt myself being moved, my body being pulled up off the ground into the air, before I hit the ground once more. I could feel my feet moving along the ground, in a distant, dreamy sort of way, and I realised that Blacksun was moving us away from them. That she was running from the Death Eaters to find a safe-haven. I could still hear her wailing and crying in pain and distress as she ran on through the streets and the alleyways, and all the while the green fire blazed around us. I felt her climbing up the guttering along a wall of a house and though a window. I felt her fall to the ground one last time; and the cold linoleum against my cheek felt like a distant recollection to me, as I lay there as still and quiet as a corpse.

A/N: To be continued... the madness! The horror! The bells! The BELLS!


	9. Chapter 8

Disclaimer: The world of Harry Potter, and all characters therein, do not belong to me, I've merely borrowed a few of them from JK Rowling for the duration of this story. They'll be returned polished up and good-as-new right after!

A/N: Okay, for all those who have read the whole of 'The Deathly Hallows' (like myself) I would just like to make aware that this story is not going to follow canon from the seventh book for the following two reasons: one, because it was started and planned out after the sixth book and so will be continuing along the story-arch already taking place; and two, many people are still yet to read the last book of the Potter series and I am not about to spoil it for them.

Canon, however, will remain intact regardless as to what happens in this story due to certain events, so canon-nazis needn't concern themselves overly. ;)

WARNING: Some adult themes and allusions to violence are present in this story.

_**A Beginner's Crash-Course to Dimensional Travel**_

_By CalamityM_

**Chapter 8: KO.**

"We will adjust to this new condition of living  
Like a man with his entrails now out him not in,  
After certain techniques of torture accustoms himself  
To a new condition of living... Train"

- Augie March, This Train Will Be Taking No Passengers

I awoke feeling quite uncomfortable and damp, lying in a small pool of liquid, and it took me a while to realise that I was in fact lying in a pool of my own blood; I could feel it slowly ebbing out of my nose, mouth and ears, and trickling like tears from my eyes. I couldn't move, my limbs feeling heavy, sore and useless; and every rugged gasp for breath made my lungs feel as though they were filled with razorblades. My whole body hurt terribly and a ringing headache blurred my vision and I slipped once or twice out of consciousness from the constant burning pain that racked my body.

I awoke again to, having had fainted once more without realising it, and heard the muffled sounds of footsteps. I realised that I wasn't alone in the room as I saw, through my blurry vision and out of the corner of my eye, the silhouette of someone standing over me. I felt alarmed, but I was unable to do anything to defend myself; so I simply resolved to just laying in my little pool of blood and hoping that they would leave me alone to bleed to death in peace.

"Derwent, come quickly!" said a man, whom I could only assume owned the silhouette.

I heard more footsteps, quite fast paced, and a narrow, bright light shone down into my eyes. I tried to close them and managed to close one eye-lid; the other, however, remained open, and in my further attempts to close it, my vision blurred and went dark as I felt my eyeball roll up into my head. It seemed that I had lost even the ability to blink properly.

_Go away… just go away_, I thought. _Let me lie here and die here in quiet in my little bloody wading pool…_

"Merlin's beard!" I heard a different man say. I tensed inside my own head – my body being quite useless for the task – as I remember how I had come to be in my current state and wondered if the newcomers were the Death Eaters I had thought I had escaped earlier. If they were, I was royally fu-

"She's still alive?"

"Barely, we should get her to Mungo's as soon as possible!"

Wands again. I saw one waved so very close to where I was lying and wanted to scream, but instead of pain there was a flicker of fabric out of the thin air and a stretcher unfolded itself beside me, hovering a few inches off the bloody ground. I felt my body being lifted up in a distant, hazy sort of way, much like the disembodied sensation one's limbs get when the circulation's been restricted for too long – and I was gently placed upon the stretcher just as I passed-out once more.

* * *

My consciousness wavered a few times and my recollections of the moments after I had been placed upon the stretcher back in the bloodied room were fragmented and unfinished. There were brief moments in which I had opened my eyes to see blurry out-lines of other people gathered around me and talking urgently in voices that seemed to be coming from a very long way away, before I slipped away into the darkness again. Other times, hideous times, I would startle awake abruptly, pain racking my body and the sound of my own screams (sounding strange and animalistic) echoing back to me before the Strangers would return to surround me and subdue the pain again, for a time; and occasionally there would be the sudden burning of liquid coursing down my aching oesophagus as I was forced to swallow gods-knows-what.

It seemed like only hours had past me by as my awareness waned in and out; time became a meaningless thing replaced, instead, with the sensation of vague wakefulness or nothingness. Occasionally I would be aware of my surroundings: of the light assaulting my sore eyes, the sheets painfully abrading my skin, the cold pinching my nerves or the harsh air burning my lungs; but even the pain seemed dulled as I lay in a torpid state. I had visitors constantly: a regular parade of lime green-robed figures came and went from my bedside, each as blurry and indistinct as the first. They seemed to study me for a fashion before hurrying away again. Occasionally one would wave a wand about or lean down to study me, but only once or twice (my memory was still hazy on the specifics) did I feel one of the figures actually touch me; it was almost as though they were frightened to.

I decided to leave them to it and slipped back into unconsciousness…

In the darkness I felt as though I was drifting; my body was as weightless as a feather and I was just as malleable in the dark waves as a feather would be to the wind. There was nothing to see or feel in the strange, empty place, but there was a distant sound slightly beyond the extent of my hearing; it was constant, rhythmic, but so faint from where I floated, though it gave an impression of being quite strong. I strained to hear it, but as I did so I felt myself begin to rise again, up out of the darkness, as though something wanted to keep me from hearing it too clearly. Not wanting to regain consciousness, since I was enjoying the serenity of the space I was currently inhabiting, I let the sound drift away and gently settled down once more into the safe, dark place inside my mind.

I caught a whisper in the darkness; so faint it was almost overlooked. I wondered if it was the outside world trying to drag me back up to it until I heard it again, so very far away from me; but it wasn't coming from above me, up there where the waking world waited impatiently, but from below, deeper into the depths. I turned in the darkness and looked down.

Some distance away below me she floated in an unseen current, curled up into a foetal position in her faded, off-white dress. Deep, black wisps of shadows danced about her frail and dejected form, making the white of her hair and her pale skin more pronounced in the smothering darkness. I neared her slowly, drifting down until I was level with her still form, and I reached out to touch her lightly upon her shoulder. She was cold to the touch.

_Blacksun?_

She whimpered and shivered as she lay with her body curled up in pain and her arms wrapped around herself as though to stay warm. Her hair fell away from her face and I saw the cavity where the side of her head once was; her artificial eye was nowhere to be seen in the ruin of her skull, in the fleshy mess that remained. She had reverted to her death-form, to the appearance she had borne at the moment she had died – the _first_ time that she had died. And I immediately felt a great weight of shame bear down upon me as I realised the ordeal she had gone through for my benefit.

_I'm- I'm sorry_, I thought.

She looked up at me with her remaining eye,

_Shhh…_she said, and her trembling seemed to subside as she stared up at me._ The madness falls away. I see truly, once again… eyes sees what truth there be… beyond all lies. Wide eyes, wide eye…_

There was a flicker of movement in the cavity; the ruined flesh twitched as though to move an eye that wasn't there anymore, to focus its absent gaze upon me.

_You tried to help me, didn't you? That was why you came back_, I thought, though I already knew the answer. She had been trying to protect me but I had been too afraid of her to let her fight by my side. So she had had no other choice but to fight for me instead and in the only way she had ever known how: bloodily. The poor wretched creature, born insane and broken, had only tried to defend me against my attackers and I had reacted by tried to force her away.

She smiled weakly up at me,

_I seee… I saw… the Sea… now it comes, back for me…_

_The sea?_I asked. _What sea?_

But she was fading now, becoming transparent and ghostlike as I watched, until she had disappeared completely. Leaving me alone in the dark.

A/N: To be continued... Oooohh, spooky, yes? Well, no... not really.


	10. Chapter 9

Disclaimer: The world of Harry Potter, and all characters therein, do not belong to me. They belong to JK Rowling; I've merely borrowed a few of them for a little while.

No warnings needed: this chapter's pretty PG...

PS. I _liked _the epilogue of DH ;P

_**A Beginner's Crash-Course to Dimensional Travel**_

_By CalamityM_

**Chapter 9: Fee Fie Foe, Fun For Me.**

"My first name's Angelene

Prettiest mess you've ever seen"

- PJ Harvey, Angelene

I spent a lot of my time thinking as I lay in the hospital bed at St. Mungo's, up in the Janus Thickey ward; there wasn't much else I could do. I thought about philosophy, psychology and quantum physics. And, for the most part, I thought about how annoying it was that I knew so little about any of them. They're the sorts of topics you'd study in university, if you selected those majors that is, but rarely go near on your own accord. There's always something else you have to do; some chore that comes first, or appointment you just _have to_ keep. Another day at work, or social occasion, or nightclub, or internet browsing session; until there is no time to sit down with a copy of 'A Brief History of Time' and a large mug of hot cocoa. I was regretting it now, since I was so goddamned bored!

There's very little to reflect on when you've lead a dull existence; other than the dullness of that existence and how much you wished you'd done things differently. Life regrets nag at you, 'what-ifs' heckle you from fantasies of how things might have gone: if only you'd got better grades, or a better job; if only you'd gone to uni or played more sports in high-school; if only you'd done a little more exercise and maybe a few crunches on occasion… _If only you hadn't gone to work that day…_

Well, at least I had lost a bit of weight over the past few days in St Mungo's, 10 kilos in fact! If only it hadn't been mostly in _organs_.

From what I had overheard from the whispered and urgent discussions of my carers, my organs were constantly liquifing inside my body. They seemed rather surprised by this – which wasn't very reassuring – and seemed perplexed as to what to do about it, which was even less reassuring. They seemed to be morbidly curious as to the cause of my condition; though when one of the Healer's had expressed further interest in my chest region – for some disturbing reason – the others had promptly reprimanded him. Apparently there was something wrong with my chest. I tried not to think about it too much.

Potions kept me alive, one every six hours on the timer; which was a large time-turner full of slowly draining sand and situated a foot above my bed. Just for fun, when I was particularly bored, I would watch the last few dregs of sand spill into the bottom half of the timer, while silently counting down to the moment the lid of the top half popped itself open and a sudden, loud alarm howled out across the ward for the Healer to give me my medicine. I'd watch the harassed-looking healer tap the offending thing with her wand before fetching out a thin, yellow bottle and a large spoon from her robes and poured a spoonful of the contents carefully out; the liquid itself was a muddy-brown, from what I could tell, smelt of scrambled eggs and asparagus, and tasted like vomit. The sixth hour was never Happy Hour.

The ward was resonably quiet with only a half-dozen patients in residence, who never made much sound except the occasional bark, quack or incoherent babble. Most of them stayed in their beds for the exception of maybe three or four of them – it was hard to tell who they all were exactly, since my view mainly consisted of the ceiling directly above me or the underside of someone's nostrils whenever I got a visitor. I had, however, heard the healer taking to Mrs Longbottom; though the lady never responded. A bit like me in that regards.

Most of the patients kept to themselves, except for poor Mrs Longbottom who would wandered around aimlessly, with her vague eyes gazing unseeingly, and who would sometimes pick things up, study them without seeming to notice them, before placing them back down again. I found this out when she had wandered over to my bed to look down at me, tapped vaguely at the timeturner, and then walked off again like a sleep-walker.

Poor, poor Mrs Longbottom.

It hit Unhappy Hour; I found myself trying to ignore the nausating taste as I had my dose spooned carefully into my slack mouth and felt the Healer gently caress my throat to coax the liquid down, before she refilled the spoon again. The game played on till the bottle was emptied and she put both spoon and bottle back into the recesses of her robe. She smiled down at me kindly and smoothed my hair down with a tender hand.

"There now," she said. "That's better. And you're looking better by the day! I fact, I'm quite sure I can see a little colour in your cheeks today!" She lied, reassuringly. "Who knows, by tomorrow you might be up and talking!"

And there was the brunt of my misfortunes; on top of liquefying organs, being bed-bound, and having a howling time-turner as an alarm clock, I had also been rendered into a vegetable state. I couldn't move nor talk, and I could barely even react properly.

She patted my arm in a friendly manner and fussed over my blankets and pillows motherly. She frequently smiled down at me in a reassuring way, and the only thing I could do in return was to try not to dribble too much and focus my eyes straight ahead. They seemed to have found a new and unfortunate habit of slowly revolving around in my head on their own accord if I wasn't careful; and though she never stopped smiling reassuringly, I was pretty sure it freaked her out. It certainly did me!

I couldn't help but wonder why I was still alive; though crippled as I was, I _should_ have been dead. It was possible that Black Sun had been responsible, that she had died in my place; but there was a nagging doubt as to how much effect the death of someone already dead could have on the Killing Curse. If a person was possessed by a ghost at the time they were struck down, would they survive? Somehow I didn't think so, which left the question as to why I was still alive unanswered.

The Healer was steadily finishing her rearrangements of my bed when another Healer approached. He had a permanent untidy look about him, as though he was scruffy by nature and couldn't stop regardless of what he did or tried; as he neared, his hands flew up to his dishevelled hair and tried to fix it down again. Even still, it still stuck up in various places, but stiffly as though it was fighting its way through a thick layer of hair gel.

"Uh, Miriam?" he started, looking nervous; the lady-Healer looked up at him and smiled broadly.

"Oh, hello, Sabastian! What are you doing up here? Shouldn't you be on the Second Floor?" she asked him, politely.

Sabastian seemed to hesitate before responding, possibly unsure if he was being reprimanded or not,

"Um, I, er, I wanted to see how the patient was. Doing all right, is she?" he began, glancing at me nervously and patting his hair again.

"Oh yes," said Miriam. "She's doing very well!" She added and patted my arm lightly as though to encourage me. "Should be sitting up soon! I was just saying (she turned her attention back to Sabastian) how I think she's looking much better today, don't you agree?"

Sabastian stared at her for a moment before realising that that had been his cue, then nodded quickly,

"Oh? Oh yes! Yes, much better! Um, Miriam, there was something I needed to talk to you about..." he moved over to stand beside Miriam and bowed his head down to whisper something in her ear (I suddenly realised how much taller than her he was) and she blinked and looked at him in surprise.

"Well!" she said. "I'm not sure where you've heard a rumour like that, Sabastian-"

"But Miriam, don't try to pretend it isn't true! Marius swears he saw it with his own eyes! Is there or isn't there a mark-"

But Miriam rounded on him, an unexpectedly angry expression on her face. I had never seen her angry before and it was more than a little concerning,

"Now look here, Sabastian, I do not go around listening to rumours and I certainly do not go spreading them - especially ones about my patents! Now is there anything else you wanted to talk to me about?"

I could see Sabastian's eyes widen in shock and realised he must have felt quite abashed by Miriam's sudden defensiveness, it had certainly taken me by surprise.

"No, no nothing at all," he said stiffly and turned to leave. I heard his footsteps stopped abruptly at the door, then heard him say: "You know, Miriam, it's no crime to be a little curious! Maybe _you_ ought to be a little more curious about your patents, after what happened to one of them last time!"

But Miriam didn't acknowledge this, though she frowned and her mouth tightened into a thin line; instead she continued to bustle around me and I soon heard Sabastian leave via the door. Finally Miriam glaced at the door, tutted to herself and muttered something about people keeping their own noses clean, and never making another mistake again if she could help it. I was pondering what exactly this all could mean when my view was suddenly obscured by a large grinning face.

_Gahh!_I thought, and I felt my left eyeball roll up in suprise.

"Afternoon! A _good_ afternoon now that I've come to visit, wouldn't you say?" said the mouth hovering mere inches from my face. The face moved back a bit and I could finally identify it's owner: Lockheart.

_Aw crap, not Gilderoy!_

"I've brought her a nice little prezie!" he told Miriam, jovially, before leaning down to talk into my face again. "I- have- brought- you- a- pres- ent!" He said and then moved so that he could wave a glossy rectange of paper in front of my face.

"Gilderoy, you silly, you don't need to talk so closely to her face, she isn't deaf, dear," said Miriam as she tended to the next patient in the next bed.

"Just making sure! Here you are, see?" he held the paper up infront of my eyes (or at least the one that hadn't rolled up and hid under my eyelid in fear of him) so that I could view the A4 size photo of him portrayed therein. His image was grinning and waving enthusiastically at me and the words 'Get well my no. 1 fan' was scrawled in rough, cursive handwriting above it. I tried to shut my eyes in frustration and felt my left eye roll back down again, which wasn't exactly a great help.

I had been sharing a ward with Lockheart and the other unfortunate victims of magical accidents for the past month now, and for some odd reason I had become the focus of Lockheart's attention. Miriam seemed annoyingly cheerful about the whole situation, mentioning occasionly to my prone form – and any other healers that visited the ward – that he might rather like me, and wasn't that sweet? The other healers seemed to think it was pretty funny and-or adorable. I didn't. There's nothing pleasant about waking up to a view of teeth mere centremetres away from your face every day, as some madman grinned down at you like the bloody Cheshire Cat.

I managed to blink a few times, then my eyelids fluttered a bit but I succeeded in keeping them from closing entirely.

_HaHA! Got it!_ I felt triumphant!

Lockheart was babbling in earnest now as he sticky-taped the photograph onto the space of wall above my bedhead, along with the other dozen or so photos he had put up on other occasions. I concentrated on my blinking exercises while half listening to his ramblings.

"I've been terribly busy today," he was saying. "Mrs O'Patrick from 74 Bay View sent me a letter! I've been writing a reply, would you like to hear it?"

_Left-eye shut_, I thought to myself, _Left-eye open. Left- eye- open... Damn it, left-eye! OPEN!_

"I'm thinking I'll write the good copy on that nice pad of paper Mrs Yeats of Unit 4, 17 Elizabeth Street, sent me, you know, the purple and green one? I do rather like the shades and patterns of it! Do you suppose Mrs O'Patrick will?" there was the rustling of paper as he sorted through what sounded like a small novel, which I could only assume was the 'letter' he had been composing.

I ignored him; it was generally best to just let Lockheart get on with it and focus on something else while he rambled, and I had more important matters to contend with,

_Damn, okay, trying again: left-eye- open! Open! Op- Yes! Left-eye is now open! Now, moving on to right..._

"You're quite right!" he said, as though I actually had the capacity to respond. "I _should_ use the other pad with gold stars and matching envelopes! That's a much better idea!" He leaned over to grin down at me again, only slightly yelling this time, "Why, we do make quite a team, don't we!"

It felt like it was going to be another long day.

A/N: To be continued... I swear, it's going to stop being boring soon... I hope.


End file.
